Lullaby
by Queen
Summary: A reflection made by Kikyou....


_Lullaby_

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_Always with the end,_  
_comes Hope and Rebirth_  
_-Sailor Saturn_

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Earth to earth.

Dust to dust.

Ashes to ashes.

Slime to slime.

Amen.

I'm lonely inside my skin.

Lullaby, my souls inside. Lullaby...

Let the silence of the night sing you to sleep, sing you to your final rest from the unease of the waking world. The dark night of the soul will not reach you here. An eclipsing moment of darkness before the light of the soul's awakening. What is a dawn to one who has not slept? A nightmarish moment of continuation. Without rest, how can one continue in their life? Disruption. Stolen dreams, corrupted into nightmares. Once, I slept so easily, and now I wake early and wander in the pain of another's dawn.

I stand at the lip of a lake, which flows into the river of souls. Styx water is black in the darkness, clear in the daylight. One can see forever though blurry waves, down to the bottom where there are rocks and sand and fish. Life growing in ancient habitat. Magical and divine and breathing through the water. Down the river of souls, down into the depths of the underworld. No golden bough to light my way. No sybil am I, to lead myself though Hell.

The moon is silver this night. Harvest moon, golden glow, silver light. _Tsuki no hikari_. Moonlight. It is the _yin_, the darkness of spirit, the feminine, and it glows from the moonlight. I drink it in and choke on the memory of coldness. Bones and earth without breath of life.  
Looking up, I see the stars in their forms. Patterns set centuries before the earth that is my body grew cool. I see the roaming lights in the heaven, stars of protection, destruction. Do you answer questions, Saturn in the sky? What do you see at night, Neptune? Do you laugh at the comedy of human life? Do you smile at our battles, Mars? Do you prophecy, Venus? Do you answer questions, Mercury? What lies in the future? The flashes of memory not my own, but that of my other self?

Do you look at me and feel pity?

Or do you hate me, for being the Queen of Dead Souls?

Ashes to ashes, amen.

Earth to earth, amen.

Pray for the Queen of the Dead Souls.

Fear conflict in Heaven, fear peace in Hell.

Lullaby, my souls inside. Lullaby...

The cycle of nature is life, death, rebirth. Have I died only to become this? A reflection of what I was? In the still surface of the Styx, it seems my image is not my own, but another's. Younger. Less lonely. Yes, far less lonely...

I have been reborn.

But not.

Yet.

I live again, but not.

Yet.

Is rebirth so different from resurrection?

Ah. So murmurs the Styx...

Is my soul her soul, then? And if so, am I that other me? Who is a reflection and incarnation of who? We are a mirror that does not reflect, are we not, my other self? Hatred gives me motion, but it is a stirring of your soul that gives me life. Does my soul stretch so far into the future? Does is stretch so far into the past? Is your name my name? What's in a name? A woman by any other name is not, after all, the same woman...  
Is my soul hers, and hers mine? Our cycle of life shattered on a broken memory. Truth for her is what she learns, Truth for me is what I remember. And I remember claws in my body, tearing. I remember blood on my clothes. I remember death.

Who is my nemesis?

On who do I take vengeance?

That other me?

The one I love?

Does a soul find itself only to lose itself again?

I would be beside you, soulmate mine.

Lullaby, my souls inside. Lullaby...

Leaves shine silver in the moonlight, and there is water scented wind in the air. Yet no rain shall fall this night. This is the hour of emptiness. Only the _yin_. Only the moonlight, and the memories not mine.

Am I to be emotionless then? A shell, a puppet thing without strings? How goes a dance of the dead? Emotionless and empty and animated with the spirits of ghosts. They are beautiful, are they not? The remnants of the living? Shades that glow and dance in the dark, floating, glowing in their beautiful ugliness. Are they not beautiful, my souls inside? Filling me and giving me life? They float over the river of the dead, spiraling in their nightly dance, turning in insectile joy. I reach up a hand and it is alight, glowing softly in remembrance. No golden fireflies dance here with them. And legend whispers the fireflies are the souls of the dead, glowing and dimming only to light again, cycling undisrupted. And yet so easily they die.  
The memories of my souls pass into me.

They become my memories, my recollections of people I do not know, have not met. Faces called Mother, Father, Sister, Brother, Lover, Beloved. These souls are my soul. From many, comes the one.

Me.

Ashes to ashes.

Dirt to dirt.

Soul to soul.

Amen.

Lullaby, my souls inside. Lullaby...

And there are flashes of memory unlike any others.

A world not yet born. Yet to be dreamed. Centuries in the making. In the future. Corrupt and beautiful and painful and wonderful. Musical and discordant, harmonized and unsung.

My memories. Her life.

Her feelings.

My feelings.

Emotions linked though a shared soul.

Will she love as I loved?

Do I only love because she loves?

Perhaps.

Is it more noble, for me to suffer my ill fortune? Or, by living, oppose my fate? Life is tenuous. Tremulous and iridescent, as my souls. My own life is so tenuous, I hardly give it a thought...yet to know the lives of others is piercingly sad. Lullaby, my souls inside. Lullaby...lullaby...

To die.

To sleep.

To sleep, perchance to dream...

Those are words not yet written. And yet I know them, from her thoughts.

Her soul is my soul.

My soul is her soul.

Our love is one Love.

And that I shall not dispute.

Dust to dust.

Earth to earth.

Bones...to bones.

Amen.

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Not quite sure where this came from.

Kikyou has always intrigued me. Her change into a golem-woman is very...interesting. There are trickles of Shakespeare throughout this, and a touch of Murasaki Shikibu. The 'Styx' is the river of death that runs though the Underworld, in the Greek mythos. And I know, Kikyou being a miko, it's unlikely she would say 'Amen' -that being Christian, yet it somehow fit with the rather Gothic tone of this...

Inuyasha does not belong to me.  
He belongs to Kagome.  
I still like Kikyou despite that.  
Takahashi Rumiko owns them all.

Ja ne, til next storytime.  
-Queen


End file.
